An Exercise in Worldbuilding
by Kingsonne
Summary: Muggleborn Ravenclaw Terry Cline has enjoyed worldbuilding ever since he used to stay up late to watch his dad DM for a group playing in his homebrew world. After his third year he created a post on a worldbuilding forum describing the magical world, and asking for peoples thoughts. The reaction he got was greater than he expected, and things might be spiraling out of his control.
1. Forum Posts on Sunday

Username: RavenMudMage

Password: **********

Logging In to RPG Worldbuilding…

Connected!

Thread: Thoughts on this Magical World?

Unread Posts: 1467

Page: 78/78

New Post

Hey guys, first of all, wow. You've clearly been busy since Christmas time. It sucks that my boarding school is so restrictive about internet access or I would be here working with you all. As it stands, I've only had a chance to skim through a few pages of your mad genius and wanted to make a post addressing something before I really get into it.

So to get started. Some of the newer thread participants need to reread the stickied posts at the beginning. This massive worldbuilding exercise we've been undertaking together already has a foundation that we are building on. Please don't suggest changing any underlying rules as that diminishes the work we've all done together within those constraints. That being said, if something seems inconsistent in the foundation rules feel free to bring it up. As xxXDragonbornHedgehogXxx pointed out last year, the requirement for wands is partially superfluous and wandless magic is a possibility. Thank you once again Hedge, that's been a huge hit with my group at school.

I know that MagicWiz and his buddies have really taken to the spell crafting aspect of the world and I wanted to give you an update on their work. Those spells you crafted have worked great in our playtesting and are regularly employed by my friends at school, though I might pull the Napalm spell out of play for balance issues.

More good news is that my mom found some more books in the attic. Seriously, the amount of effort that Mystery Writer put into the lore building for this world is astounding. It's like Tolkein level.

Anyway, these look like more textbooks, for Arithmancy and Ancient Runes as well as some notes for potions. Cursory glances this afternoon show that it should answer some of the questions that MagicWiz420 and potatologist had when they were trying to figure out the rules of spell crafting. What they've done so far has been amazing, so I'm sure that this will just make things better.

Similarly LadyClarice should be interested in how the ancient runes lore compares with her dissertation work and the latest arrays she worked up. Also, DarthNoob, I think I saw some loose potions notes on advanced reactions, this could be what you are missing to make what you've done so far all click together. I'll upload some scans as soon as I have a chance.

For those of you more interested in the story arcs we've been building I promise an update on where things have ended up for the political plotline as well as the magic school plot thread. I look forward to your analysis and where you think things are going to go from here.

I have lots more to tell you and A LOT of back posts to get through. I'll be on Discord tonight while I read through the old posts. I promise more updates on spellcrafting, new potions, herbology, and the results of our thoughts about a 13th use for dragon blood later. Looking forward to another summer with you guys.

RavenMudMage out.

Terry Cline, rising 6th year Ravenclaw muggleborn, sat back in his swivel chair after hitting post on his response. Terry had been surprised when Professor Longbottom came to his home in the summer of 2015 to tell him and his parents that he was a wizard. Not too surprised though. Terry had always known he was special. It was his dad's fault. That's what his mum used to say before they knew the truth. That his dad had filled his head with too much fantasy as a child and confused him about reality.

Terry's dad, Albert, was a geek. He loved sci-fi, fantasy, comics, and games of all sorts, and every Friday night for as long as Terry could remember, he sat at the dining table with his friends and wove magical tales of adventurers in the land of Claereon. Claereon was his father's homebrew rpg world, a land of danger and magic that Terry loved with all his heart.

When he was younger, he would sneak into the dining room after his mum had put him to bed to listen to the stories of warlocks and mages casting spells to fight demons and monsters and save the day. Deep down, he knew that he was like them. His mother thought the whole thing was ridiculous, and tried to ground him in reality. While his dad thought it was hilarious and called Terry his little magician.

As much as he loved Claereon, Terry knew that it wasn't where he belonged. He knew that he was special, that _he_ had been the one to stop the car when it was sliding out of control, that _he_ had _refilled_ the milk jug, not been mistaken about how empty it was, that _he_ had magically _made his toy dragon breath fire_ not been playing with matches. No matter how special he was though, he wasn't like the magical people of Clareon.

So at age seven he had drawn his first map. It was rough, and done in crayon, but it was his world, with magical people like him in it. Over the years he developed the world a bit, and his dad even played a one shot in it with his buddies once. At age 10 he lied about his age when registering an account on and worldbuilding forum in order to share his work with others.

When he stepped into Hogwarts though, his world was flipped upside down. Yes this magical world was full of magical people like him, but it wasn't Claereon, and it wasn't his world either. It was fantastical and amazing, and hidden right under everyone's noses, but it was also a place of obscure magical rules, of quills and parchment, of blood prejudice and a bloody war not even 10 years past.

He was sorted into Ravenclaw, and spent the first two years of his time at Hogwarts fighting what seemed like a never ending battle to make sense of the endless rules, laws, circumstances, and mechanics that governed magic. Adding on Ancient Runes and Arithmancy in his third year only made things more complicated.

Why couldn't things be as simple and straightforward as in an RPG? With laid out rules that covered everything and made sense.

When he came home that summer it was with an idea simmering in the back of his head that was either mad, or genius. He created a new account on RPG Worldbuilding and spun his tale. A collection of notes and rough drafts found in a chest in the basement of a new home, some kind of mix between the work of an unpublished author and a manic gamemaster that they ended up calling the Mystery Writer. A homebrew world taking place here on Earth, with a magical society hiding in plain sight.

His first post was just to see if anyone was interested. He laid out some of the basics of the magical world with specifics edited out. How it was hidden from normal people, how magic was done with wands and incantations, potions brewed with magical ingredients, secondary schools teaching the youth how to perform magic in an established setting.

He couldn't sleep that night. Certain that every tap of the wind blown branch against his window was a ministry owl informing him that he had broken the statute of secrecy and was being expelled. The letter never came, but the forum responses did.

It was only a few people at first, Hedgehog, potato, MagicWiz, but they found the details he had provided fascinating, and wanted to help him flesh out the world more. So he posted, again and again. Uploading scans of textbook pages when he could, and typing up edited information when he needed to. Gamps Laws of Transfiguration, Wand Movement charts, potion ingredient interaction tables.

People ate it up and they wanted more. More than mechanics, they wanted worldbuilding. So he gave them history (edited of course). Hogwarts founders, statute of secrecy, ministry of magic, and magical wars. They wanted plot lines so he gave them current events, political maneuvering, the ongoing blood prejudice issues, the fight for creatures rights led by war hero Hermione Granger, the strange common strange occurrences at Hogwarts.

The year before they had moved a lot of the discussion to chat services at the request of RPG Worldbuilding moderators due to the high post volume. Now they had about 18 core active people as well as dozens of occasional posters working to "flesh out the worldbuilding" of the magical world that they didn't know was real.

Terry leaned forward to close the lid to his laptop and got up to get ready for dinner. He waved his hand to open his trunk and unpack the clothes from his trunk that he would actually consider wearing in the muggle world. Wandless magic was such a shock to the pureblood witches and wizards at school but it felt so natural that Terry still had a hard time understanding their difficulty with it.

DragonbornHedgehog had pointed it out early on, the inconsistency between the magical history of wands, accidental magic, and some of the "scenes" that Terry had described in Mystery Writers notes. The wand was a tool, but had become a crutch to the magical world to the point that they didn't think about magic without it.

What was the saying? If you have a hammer every problem looks like a nail? Wands were the hammer, but they were a damn good one that could treat most problems as if they were nails with no problem. The thing was, not every problem was a nail, and not every nail needed a hammer to push in.

It had even been a shock to Terry when he worked out how to move and affect things intentionally without using his wand. A mere three years in the magical world and he had already started to accept that things just were the way everyone said they were.

Realizing that that was absolutely not true was like opening the flood gates. That first summer he had started asking people to think of new applications of magic within the rules that they had laid out. Splinter chats and threads had popped up, little self contained teams treating the world building exercise like a puzzle and attacking the questions with vigor.

Potatologist had already proposed over a dozen spells that he had worked out. To Terry's surprise he had found some of them in the Library when he was back at Hogwarts, but not all of them.

DarthNoob was a software engineer and had been working on a python script in his free time to process over the reaction tables from the potion textbook along with the known recipes to generate an algorithm that could predict potion affect based off of ingredients and brewing process.

The first program had worked for the basic potions but didn't include any of the more complex processes or reactions that they were dealing with in OWL level potions. Even then it was able to generate a couple of first year level potions that Terry hadn't been able to find any reference to.

The liquid starlight potion, or Aerendil potion as the forum had named it had been Terry's first publication. A first year level potion that generated hours of soft, comforting, light when agitated. As far as he knew it was mostly used by house witches to make night lights for their children, though if a few first years made it for themselves no one said anything.

The defensive runic array that LadyClarice had constructed using the third and fourth year texts would have been his second, if Gringotts hadn't approached him to buy it out. He felt a little bad taking the money without being able to share it, but couldn't think of a way to send it to an anonymous person on the internet without explaining where it came from.

As he finished unpacking and settling into his room, Terry thought through the dozens of spells, potions, and runic arrays he had tested at Hogwarts since Christmas, and the dozens more that were sure to be waiting for him in those unread posts. It was beginning to feel a little out of control to be honest. How could he introduce all of these discoveries without coming across as some kind of prodigy. A prodigy lacking the skills to back up the title.

He heard his father calling him and bounded down the stairs. To see two foreign magicals standing in the entryway.

"Terry Cline? We're from the ICW, and we'd like to ask you a few questions."


	2. Chats

*Author Note*

I've bumped the rating to T for minor language and drug references.

Thank you for the reviews and follows. Hope you enjoy part 2

* * *

Terry swallowed harshly as he slowly made his way down the rest of the stairs. Was it the latest potions he had introduced? Did the Goblins find something in the runic arrays that indicated muggle origin? Did his OWL results catch attention by not being good enough.

"Thank you Mr. Cline," the shorter of the two said in an accent that Terry guessed was some sort of nordic language, possibly Swedish. "We'll have your son back later this evening, don't worry."

Terry's father seemed a little unsure, but accepting of the reassurance. Terry was less so. If he was in trouble with the International Confederation of Wizards they could just as easily wipe all memory of him from his parents minds if they resisted what was going to happen.

The tall wizard held out a heavy iron pendant of twisting knotted metal, some sort of celtic knot perhaps, and nodded at him.

"Portkey" he said shortly, some sort of Eastern European accent, though one word wasn't enough to say more.

Terry hesitantly took one edge of the pendant gut clenching from anticipation of both the spinning of the portkey, and of what would await him on its arrival. Short gave a quick nod to him and grabbed hold of the pendant himself, and then they were spinning.

Terry had only taken a portkey once, as part of the magical introduction class that Hogwarts had established for muggleborn the year before he started at the school. This one was considerably more nauseating and longer, but it finally ended, depositing him onto a stone floor.

Looking around he saw exquisitely hewn and polished stone walls. Intricate carvings surrounding open fireplaces and detailed mosaic work highlighting areas that could only be designated portkey and apparation points.

The chamber they were in gave no indication if it was crafted out of monolithic stone blocks, or hewn from the very bedrock itself. Terry thought it looked very grand and imposing, as he would expect from the world wizarding government.

Tall grasped his elbow with a surprisingly gentle grip for such a large man and directed Terry to follow Short as they made their way down the entry chamber. At the end, over an arched doorway leading deeper into the headquarters was a massive carving of the same intricate knotwork on the pendant.

Short held up his pendant when they reached the door, it glowed slightly and the door unlatched. Terry followed Short inside, expecting to enter another hallway, but instead finding himself in a small conference room.

The ICW wizard must have noticed his confusion and raised the pendant "Security measure. Only allows in authorized personnel access to the facility, and only allows those same personnel access to chambers they have approval for." He gestured to a chair. "Take a seat, we have a lot to discuss."

Terry sat down in the offered chair, while Short and Tall sat down on the other side of the table.

"Now, Mr. Cline, we are here to discuss, among other things, your breach of the Statute of Secrecy established Internationally in 1692. First however, introductions. My name is Magnus Olafson from the United Nordic Commonwealth, ICW Statute of Secrecy Adviser and my shortspoken companion," he said, motioning to Tall, " is Jakub Novak, ICW Statute of Secrecy Enforcer, from Czechoslovakia."

"I am sure you have a lot of questions, but if you'll bear with me I believe I can answer most of them, and I can answer them faster without interruptions." He pulled what Terry was surprised to see was a modern cell phone from his pocket and set it on the table before placing some sort of crystal on top of it. Magnus tapped on the crystal and a projection of the phone screen appeared on the wall, showing, to Terry's dismay, his thread on RPG Worldbuilder.

"Now, we don't have time to list through all of them, but between exposing the actions of the so called British "Dark Lord" Voldemort, scans of Hogwarts textbooks, and discussion of the Statute of Secrecy itself with anywhere from 180 to as much as 3000 different muggles, you have been indicated in 32,741 violations of the Statute of Secrecy." He paused to glance meaningfully at Terry.

"While such an egregious amount of violations would under normal circumstances result in expulsion, fines, and jail time at the very least. This is not a normal circumstance, and we need your help.

Terry gaped at Short-_Magnus_ he reminded himself. "I, uh, of course. How can I help, what do you need from me?" he asked.

"Do you know why you haven't been contacted regarding your breaches of the Statute until now Mr. Cline?" Magnus asked and then continued on without waiting for an answer. "I assure you it's not because either the British Minister for Magic or the ICW approved of your '_world building exercises._' No. It's because until a month ago no one had a single clue that they existed"

The internet has been publicly accessible for almost 30 years now, and it has been widely used by a majority of muggles for over 12. In all that time do you know how much effort was given to monitoring the internet for breaches in the Statute?"

Terry didn't even try to answer this time. "A three man team! That's all. The old men in charge at the ICW didn't consider advancing muggle technology a '_significant concern_' and left only three people to monitor it." Anyone with half a brain can see how the advances in photography, videography, and communication technology pose and existential threat to the secrecy of our world."

Magnus was standing now, pacing as he talked and gesturing wildly with his hands. "But it still took me, as an Advisor on the Statute _25 years of lobbying_ to get approval for a branch of the ICW dedicated to understanding muggle technology!"

He held up the cell phone and crystal. "Do you know how long it took to develop a way to stop magical interference from affecting electrical components? Six months. Six months! With a dedicated team and the resources needed it only took us six months to figure out how to bring magical society out of the dark ages technologically!"

"And you know what?!" He said turning and pointing at Terry, "One of your muggle forum users, some engineer or something who has never seen real magic in his life figured it out in three weeks as part of a world building thought experiment."

That would have been Hedgehog, Terry thought to himself idly.

"We're too far behind, and there's no way of catching up." He set the phone and crystal back down and began flicking at the projection with his wand, cycling between various images and video clips, each showing something magical. "Youtube, America, two years ago. Vine, UK, four years ago. Reddit, Australia, three weeks ago. Instagram, Germany, last week. RPG Worldbuilding, UK the last two years."

"The Statute is leaking like a sieve. And while we've been lucky so far with these accidental leaks, since most muggles think these are clever CGI, editing, or," he looked pointedly at Terry, "fantasy roleplay. That doesn't guarantee the future. We don't have the time or expertise to create some kind of magical blackbox censor for the internet, and even if we could it wouldn't be enough. The moment a single individual chooses to destroy the Statute of Secrecy, it will be destroyed."

"Its only a matter of time before some dumb kid pulls a stunt that ends up on the 24 hour news cycle, or a Dark Lord chooses to expose us. The ICW", Magnus said, glancing sideways at Jakub, "has approved the formation of a task force dedicated to influencing public perception regarding magical people in the '_unlikely_' event that the Statue is irrevocably breached."

Terry would have to have been deaf to miss the venom in that quote. He waited a second, unsure if he was supposed to speak, Magnus having paused in his tirade for the first time in minutes. He opened his mouth to say something when the short wizard continued.

"This is where you come in, among other people. It's clear from the things your little group have been pulling together that even without a full understanding of magic muggles can provide valuable insight into magical developments. As one prong of our defense against a catastrophic reaction to the inevitable breach, we want you to assemble a team from your group to address joint muggle/magical innovation and cooperation."

No matter what Terry could have come up with for how his first day back for summer holiday would have gone, he would never in a thousand years have predicted this. He looked from Magnus to Jakub. "I guess there is really only one answer isn't there?"

* * *

Terry sat in his bedroom later that evening and stared at his laptop. He had been portkeyed back after another couple of hours of meetings with Magnus and had made it home in time for dinner. If it hadn't been for his promise to Terry's father though Terry thought they would have just sent someone for his things.

Keeping promises with "the muggles" was high on Magnus's priority list. His end goal of these ventures was to create a body of positive feeling between muggles and magicals that could weather the revelation of the existence of magic. Being as open and trustworthy as possible with those that they could was a start.

He would be returning to the ICW compound in the morning before heading out on what he had begun thinking of in his head as the "recruitment drive." Right now though, he had some PM's to draft.

Private Message:

Sender: RavenMudMage

Recipients: potatologist, LadyClarice, MagicWiz420, xxXDragonbornHedgehogXxx, DarthNoob, …[13 more]...

Subject: Opportunity

Hey All,

So. I still haven't had an opportunity to go through all of the posts from the last few months. I'll be on Discord like I said earlier, but something crazy has come up. I have a lot of information that I want to bring up that I think you all will be blown away by. I'm going to give you the basics here but go into more detail in channel.

Basically, I've got an opportunity to go public with all of the things we've been working on, kind of like a publishing deal. There are still a lot of things that my sponsors want to see us flesh out, and they want to bring as many people in as they can to make that happen. I'm sending this message to all of the core contributors. I'm creating a private channel on the Discord for us to talk more, but basically, we have an opportunity to turn this hobby of ours into a job, where we can share this stuff with the world, and make some money doing it.

Good money.

These sponsors really want to see what we can do when we have some resources.

Try to make it on tonight please.

RavenMudMage out.

Terry looked over his message a couple of times before sending it out to everyone. It was strange, to be taking these steps towards an approved breach of the Statute of Secrecy. He hadn't even been able to show his parents most of what he was learning at school without getting slapped on the wrist with an underage magic citation, and now here he was preparing to expose the truth to internet friends he had never met in real life before.

He logged into Discord and opened up the private chat channel he had created. DarthNoob and LadyClarice were already logged on, which made sense as they were both young adults. Terry knew more about them than most of the participants in the group, probably because they were the closest to him in age.

Clarice was a student undertaking a Masters Degree in Viking and Anglo-Saxon History, while Noob was fresh out of uni and doing odd jobs while looking for a programming job. It was common to see them online for a majority of the day.

*RavenMudMage has joined the channel*

-RMM: Hey guys, you read the message then?

-DN: Hey Raven! Yeah I hopped on as soon as I got the notification. Pretty crazy stuff right?

-LC: Hello mudboy, I'm excited to hear more about these "sponsors" of yours.

-LC: Though to be honest I'm more excited about those Rune notes you've found.

*MagicWiz420 has joined the channel*

-DN: Ayyyyy if it isn't the great stoner himself

-MW: Sup Noob. Clarice. _Raven_. Before we get distracted by anything as unimportant as that cryptic PM. WHY are you removing my Napalm Curse? I worked hard on that bastard, it's so clean, the casting time should be minimal within the rules and think of the FIRE.

-RMM: Ah, actually not so much of a balance issue as a gameplay choice. I introduced it to the group as a new (in universe even) level 5 spell based on the spell difficulty class you gave it and a couple players picked it up. Based on the effects as written, it's a bloody horrifying spell, especially with how easy it is to learn and with no counterspell. The party leader made an executive decision not to use it out of concern that it would be picked up by the Dark Forces.

-MW: Alright, so I think the word you are looking for is AWESOME not horrifying, but I get that from a roleplaying standpoint. It shouldn't be too hard to figure out a counter. Though hmm…. I'm assuming you don't just want me to create a spell that would suffocate the fire, that'd probably fall into the same category of "Oh no don't let the bad wizards get it." I'll look into combining some sort of vanishing or transfiguration that can target only the napalm. Maybe with some sort of cooling charm built in? Or I could try to start with the inverse of the wand movement? Converse? I'll let you know.

*MagicWiz420 left the channel*

*MagicWiz420 has joined the channel*

-MW: Right we had other things to talk about. This can wait.

-DN: lol

*xxXDragonbornHedgehogXxx has joined the channel*

-DH: Good evening everyone, just put the baby down to bed and the missus is taking advantage to have a nice long bath. I've got time to chat. Though a couple of the guys I know IRL wanted me to pass along that they don't think they'll be continuing with the venture if we are going to take it beyond hobby level.

-RMM: Yeah, I've been getting pinged like crazy in my PM's quite a few of the regulars either don't want to put their work out there on the market, or are too busy to commit more time, or are just not interested for any reason. I'm glad you're all still here though.

-MW: Potato said he wouldn't be able to make it on today as he's at work, but he wanted you to know that he is VERY interested in seeing where this is going.

-LC: Aren't you at work Wiz?

-MW:Minimum wage hotel receptionist in the late afternoon muh'Laday. I could even light up and no one would notice, let alone dick around on the lobby computer. Hell, how do you think I put so much thought into my spells?

-RMM: Alright everyone. Unfortunately I just got another PM, from ViggoMortis, he's not interested in moving on with this either. So it looks like its just us.

-MW: and potato.

-RMM: And potato.

*RMM is typing...*

-MW: Jesus Raven, you writing a book for us?

-RMM: So like I said, the main gist of the deal is that these sponsors want to see what we can do when we have more time and resources to dedicate to putting this thing together. I'm talking like hiring an investigator to track down more information about Mystery Writer, getting us more source docs to go off of, full time positions for those of us with more ambition than receptionist. Flexible hours for Clarice so she can continue with her dissertation and Hedge so he can take care of his family.

-RMM: Shut up Wiz.

*RMM is typing…*

-RMM: The sponsors think this thing is going to be big, like rival 5E, Pathfinder, and Warhammer big, with novels, minis, lorebooks, novelizations, etc. They're going to be bringing in some other people for making use of a lot of what we are going to be putting out, but what they want from us is a fully filled out and rock solid Worldbuilding and Lore foundation. Basically what we've already been doing except getting paid for it.

-DH: So what's the catch?

-RMM: NDA's and forum death. The forum posts and the chat groups will have to be closed until we are ready to go public and our work will be on complete lockdown.

-DN: Jesus. Complete shutdown of the forum? That's gonna suck for those that don't get brought in.

-RMM: I'm pretty sure they'll be open to bringing in any of the others that have a change of heart, and the non regulars are sure to find another project that catches their interest. They always do.

-LC: So what do we have to do? What's the next step?

-RMM: Interviews. Like any job I suppose.

-MW: Like a kid like you's ever had a job.

-RMM: No comment. If you guys could try to find times tomorrow that you can be in a private location. We'll do these through video chats. For security we'll be using a private VPN connection for the calls. Please install this and then PM me times that you'll be available. NDA's don't go into effect unless you agree to join up, but they'd appreciate it if you took some steps to ensure privacy for the call.

*RMM uploaded executable file. ICW_VPFN *

-DN: Mhm. Not a sketchy file at all. Who's even heard of a VPFN? What's the F? Is this really just some elaborate phishing scam? Tell me something that only the real Raven would know.

-RMM: Lol, first off, almost all of our communication has been through forums or chat, so if my account was compromised they'd know everything anyway. Second, I know that you've been trying to chat up LadyClarice with no success if that counts, and third, feel free to run any antivirus you want on that, or only install it on a virtual machine, or whatever technical mumbo jumbo you feel up to. No scam, just security.

-DN: Alright alright alright. No need to air anyones love life out in the open. Just being careful. Social Engineering is the most effective way to get access to information you shouldn't have you know, not hacking. Just pretending to be someone else, or someone with authority can get you lots of places.

-DH: Like that thing with the clipboard, you know, where you can walk anywhere if you wear a hardhat and hold a clipboard.

-DN: Right. Anyway I trust you Raven. No need for a PM for me, I'm open all day tomorrow and my flatmates will be out working during the day and partying at night. Just schedule me whenever.

-DH: I'll get you a list of times later tonight, I'm sure the little one will have me up enough to figure it out.

-LC: Same, though with crushing course load rather than an infant.

-MW: I'll make sure potato reads through the logs and gets you his times before morning for you Brits.

-RMM: Alright thanks everyone, I should be heading to bed. I'll be joining in on the video calls tomorrow, so I'll talk to you all then.

*RavenMudMage left the channel*


End file.
